To be honest, I’d felt pretty damned shoddy about my behaviour towards Abigail almost as soon as she’d shot off home earlier tonight. What was I bloody thinking? Aunt Val had grabbed me by the elbow in our passage afterwards and given me what for while Nan was getting her coat.
‘You shouldn’t treat people that way, David,’ she’d said. ‘It’s mean. If you don’t fancy Abigail then you shouldn’t be mucking her about like that.’
I knew she was right and I felt frightful about it.
‘I thought I was being funny,’ I mumbled, looking down at the floor. ‘I don’t really fancy Abigail. I actually like somebody else but it’s all a bit sticky and so I …’
Aunt Val had put a finger under my chin and lifted my face up towards hers.
‘I think I’ve figured that out for meself,’ she said softly. ‘In fact, I think I’ve known it for a long while. But you wanna start sorting yourself out, David. It’s not like you to be spiteful, and it’s not that poor girl’s fault, is it?’
I’d looked Aunt Val in the eye, only for a moment, and willed her to say something more, to say the words out loud, but she didn’t, so I just said, ‘No. Sorry.’
After Mum has staggered off to bed, and Aunt Val has escorted Nan home, I trot out into the front garden armed with a packet of Chrissy’s Bensons, and I light one up. I sit down on the front-room window ledge and take a long drag, and then tip my head back, blowing the smoke out, slowly and luxuriously, into the night air. It’s warmish for October, I think, and extraordinarily clear and starry into the bargain. I sit and ponder Aunt Val’s chiding words in the passage. She was right: it is very unlike me to be spiteful, and I do need to sort myself out, and quick smart about it. Suddenly I make a decision: a snap one, you might say. I decide then and there that I’m going to sweep away the debris and disarray of the past weeks and keep things simple from now on. The simple fact is that I am in love with Maxie and that is that. I will apologize to Abigail, yes, and then I’ll explain my atrocious actions by telling her the complete and utter truth – surely she’ll forgive me then. And as for Dad – well, there is no reason why he has to know bugger-all about anything, is there? As long as I don’t bring Maxie round to our house for the next couple of months and dangle him under Eddie’s nose, we could sweep the whole tawdry episode under the shagpile. It’s all going to be all right. It really is.
Just as I’m about to go back into the house, feeling rather pleased with my resolution, the porch door swings open and Chrissy appears in her cotton nightie and dressing gown, her bleached hair slicked back, wet.
‘There’s my fags,’ she says, and I throw her the packet.
She sits down next to me and starts picking flaky paint off the ledge. Then she sparks up her own cigarette, and I watch in awe as she puffs out three faultless smoke rings in a row. Chrissy always seems so much more grown up than me, I feel, even though she’s a year and a bit younger. She seems to have a composure and assurance about her that I long for but never manage to attain. Sure, I’m the clever one, but Chrissy is just so much fucking cooler. Neither of us speak for quite a while, and then finally I say to her, ‘Your hair smells of apples.’
‘That’ll be me VO5 conditioner,’ she replies somewhat tersely.
‘It’s nice,’ I say. ‘Apple-ish.’
She looks me up and down for a moment, and then she says, ‘Why were you such a fucking tosser towards Abi in there earlier? She was crying when she left, you know. I could hear her from all the way upstairs, making that funny noise at the back of her throat, like she does. You’re a bloody freak!’
‘I don’t know why I was like that,’ I whine. ‘Everything went wrong last week and I just wanted to—’
‘What’s gone wrong?’ Chrissy suddenly snaps. ‘Is it something to do with that bloody Maxie? And where was he on your birthday anyway – your new best friend? You’re just behaving really weird lately, David, cos you wanna be different. You always have to be fuckin’ different.’
Then I bristle and leap up from the windowsill.
‘ME? What about you getting back with bloody Rudolf Hess? Nan told me she spied the two of you snogging. It makes me want to vomit after what he did to Frances and Maxie: he hit him in the face!’
‘No!’ Chrissy shouts.
‘No what?’
‘He’s not a Nazi, he’s not!’
‘Oh no?’ I snipe caustically. ‘Well, he does a bloody good impersonation of one then.’
And I spill my guts about what Frances told me about Chrissy’s ‘dear little Toby’.
When I’m done, Chrissy lights another B&H, and looks altogether horrified.
‘But he didn’t know those kids were NF,’ she spits, desperately puffing out smoke in short sharp bursts, her eyes fiery. ‘He thought they were just into the clothes and the music, like him, and now that he does know he’s stopped knocking around with them – honest. He told me that he got very, very pissed on strong cider before that party on the Aylesbury, and that’s why he behaved like such a dickhead. He didn’t know what he was doing. He swore on his little sister’s life, and she’s got a semi-withered arm. He never meant to hurt Maxie or Frances – he didn’t even know that she was your friend, and he certainly wasn’t the one shouting out those vile names – that wasn’t Squirrel. He’s not like that, David, I know him.’
She suddenly has tears in her eyes.
‘He’s not,’ she says softly, and I put my arm around her.
‘You need to get him to talk to Frances then,’ I say. ‘Put things right.’
Chrissy nods solemnly.
‘I will.’
‘Sometimes nice people do horrible things, don’t they?’ I smile. ‘Like me with Abigail. I was vile to her tonight. I didn’t really mean it, though. You just have to put these things right, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, you do,’ Chrissy says, sniffing.
We sit quiet for a while, a police car whizzing along Lordship Lane with its siren going the only sound you could hear, a woman on a late-night stroll with her boxer dog the only sign of life. I consider, for a moment in the lull, mentioning Squirrel’s unexplained liaisons with our cleaner, Moira, but it doesn’t seem the right time – Chrissy seems too upset – so I decide to let it lie. Then she suddenly flicks her cigarette high in the air and into the kerb, and turns to face me.
‘Are you gay, David?’ she says. ‘Are you?’
I laugh out loud, smashing the near silence of the evening, and then I say, ‘Yes. I am.’
‘I knew it,’ she says.
And when she hugs me tight around the neck I can smell the apples.